


Hell is the Talking Type

by corvidkohai



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Genesis/Angeal/Sephiroth if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26668042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidkohai/pseuds/corvidkohai
Summary: A recounting of times when Sephiroth was called by his full title.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	Hell is the Talking Type

“SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth!”

Sephiroth thought absently to himself that the full title was new. Until this point, he had simply been SOLDIER Sephiroth. Of course, as this was his induction ceremony, it made sense. Until this point, he had not been First Class, though his membership in SOLDIER was a foregone conclusion. He had been a SOLDIER as long as he could remember, only he hadn’t been official. Now, he was. 

He stood calmly in parade rest, as he had been taught. He shook the President’s hand when instructed. The man who had received his deed of sale, given in place of a birth certificate, had such large hands. Or maybe it was that Sephiroth’s hands were small. He had trouble gripping his sword, still, but they insisted he wield Masamune. 

That was okay, though. He was only twelve, after all; his hands had time to grow. 

—

“SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth!”

He hated Heidegger. He hated him with a passion. He had gotten it in his head that being the Head of Security and technically Sephiroth’s direct supervisor meant more than it did. Sephiroth answered to him, yes, but he was well aware he belonged to Hojo first and foremost. He had ignored orders in the past and would continue to, if they were not the proper course of action. Heidegger was a bureaucrat. Sephiroth had been trained his whole life for war. When it came to strategic decisions for Wutai, he knew whose judgement to trust. 

Heidegger’s judgement was off in _many_ areas, not the least of which being that he seemed to think he had endeared himself to Sephiroth. He had no intention of spilling Science Department secrets to him. The loyalty he felt to Hojo’s department was slight, but enough. They had set him on his path, and while his accomplishments were his own, he recognized the influence of his training. It was enough to earn his silence. 

Not that he would divulge such secrets to Heidegger, anyway. Not just so he could clumsily try to recreate the process on troopers. Absolutely not. Not everyone would stand up to the process. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, regardless. 

But, luckily, Heidegger wasn’t giving him senseless orders or trying to weasel secrets from him. No, he was doing his favorite pastime: boasting. 

Sephiroth had no excuse to leave, but that was alright. He was perfectly capable of standing in parade rest and watching Heidegger’s face without listening to a word he was saying. 

—

“SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth!”

Gaia, but he was sick of it. It had been one thing, in Wutai, even in his brief stints in Midgar during the War, to be addressed as such. That had been by members of the military, by coworkers and superiors and his men. These were (mostly) people he fought with. People he risked dying with. He could handle their admiration—at least, from them, it was over his skills. 

It was less so from the adoring public. 

People whispered his title in excited glee as he passed, and it drove him up a wall. These were not people impressed by his combat skills, or glad that he was guarding their backs. These were people who fawned over his looks, who were the reason he knew that the word “hot” didn’t always refer to temperature. They admired his handsome face (which looked too alien for his own liking) and his beautiful hair (that was the only choice he had ever been allowed to make about his own appearance). 

They didn’t know _him_. They applied senseless ideas of heroism to him that had nothing to do with his actual experience of wartime. Heroes were Angeal, who strove to do the best he could by everyone. Heroes were Genesis, who stepped into the line of fire for comrades but did not ask for thanks.

He was not a hero. He was a wind-up toy soldier, whose key had been turned by the company to near the point of breaking before he’d been let loose. He was a point-and-shoot weapon, loaded and wielded by cruel hands. He had no dreams, no honor, no pride. He didn’t fight to protect the people, like Angeal. He didn’t for glory, like Genesis claimed, or to protect his comrades, as Genesis often did in practice. 

He fought because he was told to, plain and simple. No honor or dream, no glory or pride. Just orders he didn’t know how to disobey. 

If the populace knew _him_ , they would know that. They wouldn’t admire him if they got so close. He could still remember the moment he watched Genesis’s hero worship die. 

When people realized who he really was, that worship always died. Sometimes it was because they realized he wasn’t particularly attached to the concept of morality. Sometimes it was because they saw the lengths he would go to, to follow his orders. 

Sometimes it was because they found out that his beautiful hair was not a fashion choice so much as a single desperate bid at having his own identity. 

He did not like the public. 

He wished he never had to leave the Tower at all. 

—

“SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth!”

For what might have been the first time ever, Sephiroth breathed a quiet laugh at his title. 

He blamed it largely on the alcohol. It took very great quantities, consumed very quickly, for him to get even slightly buzzed, but sometimes it was worth it. For nights like this, just him, Genesis, and Angeal, in one of their apartments, throwing back shots like water. 

For Genesis with a white towel wrapped neatly around his head, mimicking Sephiroth’s hair, with his shirt off and belts of his stomach guard crossed over his chest. He wielded his glass of—whatever strong, dark liquor they were drinking now, as he might a sword. He brandished it in a dramatic pose, standing atop Sephiroth’s couch, one boot propped on the arm for effect. 

Angeal was lying on the floor, cheering and whooping, clapping fervently. 

“O great hero Sephiroth! Demon of Wutai! Woooooow!” Angeal heckled, before hiccuping. 

And this—this was okay. This was mocking the ridiculous way people treated him, his public image, what Shinra taught the world he was, but it didn’t mock him. It felt nice to be in on the joke for once. 

Genesis tossed his head, causing the towel to fall off. He fumbled for it, but was too drunk to catch it. Instead, he reached after it with one hand, and pressed the back of his other to his forehead in a highly dramatic gesture of loss, only narrowly avoiding spilling the alcohol still clutched in that hand. 

“No! My beautiful, beautiful locks, that I definitely don’t spend 1000 gil a day on and have never been tangled ever in my life!”

Sephiroth hid his smile behind his glass. Angeal rolled onto his back, laughing wildly. 

Yes. This was alright. 

—

“SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth!”

Things were not always alright. 

It felt like his ears were ringing with his title. Board members, military members, staff, civilians, Science Department members—were they incapable of just using his name? His spine straightened like a pin every time he heard it. There were too many negative associations, for all Genesis’s work at taming his reaction. Teasing only went so far when he couldn’t escape it during the rest of his waking hours. 

Every time he heard it, his posture straightened on instinct. 

Every time he heard it, he felt a scream build behind his teeth. 

—

“SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth!”

His head was reeling. All this talk of monsters, of who they really were, who SOLDIERs really were. Nibelheim’s reactor was dank and cold. The air was humid from mako storage so far below them in the reactor, making the air taste tangy and sweet like citrus. The building was old and drafty, letting the bitter mountain breeze seep through the cracks. Decaying, much like Genesis. 

Genesis, who had always wielded his words like his weapons. He told Sephiroth the “truth” they both knew he had always been searching for, and he almost wanted to call it a favor. It would have been, and it made sense for Genesis to ask for his cells, for his own favor in return. 

But Genesis twisted the words into his brain like a dagger in his heart. Like the key in his back Shinra had wound in years past to make him go. 

He didn’t want to go any further. 

There were a thousand things on the tip of his tongue. About how Genesis could drop this on him this way, how Genesis could turn against him, how _this_ could be the favor he gave before asking for such a large one in return. 

Because Genesis knew what his own body meant to him. It was a form he was forced to occupy, meat he didn’t want to inhabit. It was a weapon on loan to him that he was trapped inside. It was something he was saddled with, changing what he could with his hair to try and make it palatable. A burden he must bear and couldn’t escape. Something that had always and would always make him different from everyone else. 

It never felt truer than in this moment. 

There were a thousand things on the tip of his tongue, but what tripped off it was, “You will rot.”

He didn’t have Genesis’s gift with words, but he knew how to twist a knife with the best of them. 

—

If anyone called him by his title again, Sephiroth did not recall. He was too wrapped up in his potential to consider his past. 

After all, who would choose to be a SOLDIER First Class when they could be a god?


End file.
